The present invention relates to an art which, in a geographically remote condition such as telemedicine (including barbering and cosmetology such as cosmetic surgery), in a case of inputting an image by means of an image input device, and reproducing the image by means of an image output device, corrects a phenomenon in which the image is reproduced in a different color due to differences in device characteristics, photographing environmental characteristics (such as an illumination) etc., and color-reproduces the image correctly between remote locations.
Telemedicine has been practiced in which a doctor diagnoses a patient in a geographically remote location by examining his or her complexion displayed on a monitoring device on the doctor side by means of a communication between image devices installed in their respective locations.
In a case of carrying out such a remote diagnosis, in some cases, the patient's complexion displayed on the monitoring device on the doctor side has been displayed differing from an actual patient's complexion due to differences in color properties of image input and output devices (monitoring devices), and environmental characteristics, such as an illumination in a location in which the patient is photographed.
As a color reproduction for correcting such a difference in color and displaying a correct color, a method has been proposed by which the patient side and the doctor side have identical color charts for color reproduction, and the color reproduction is carried out by making a correction for a color matching between a color chart obtained by displaying the identical color chart on the monitoring device and the color chart the doctor actually has at hand (refer to JP-A-2003-134526).
However, in order to use such a method, it is necessary that the patient side and the doctor side never fail to have the identical color charts for the color reproduction and, normally, the color charts use special ink and papers in order to prevent a discoloration so that those are very expensive, sometimes, several hundred thousand yen or more each, so there has been a problem resulting in expensive telemedical facilities in the event of a large number of patients.